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"England"
As this thread is titled "England" I'm trying to relate the American State names referred to in posts above to the named country itself........Georgia.....the English connection? - King George II of England - and Scotland and Wales. OK - fairy snuff - you're let off.
Maryland - Queen Henrietta Maria, consort of King Charles I of said aforementioned Kingdom......fine!
The Carolinas - it's old Charlie boy again - aka Carolus in Latin.....what a bloke!
Virginia - och - easy peasy! The Virgin Queen - Elizabeth I of England and Wales only - we Scots were still independent when the Virgin Queen was on the throne. OK - the old biddy never married, that's true, but if she was truly a virgin when lying on her death bed in 1603 then I'm the next UK Pop Idol.
Tennessee? It's totally foreign! No connection with England whatsoever........
Let's not forget "New York" "New Hampshire" and "New Jersey" (British protectorate/crown dependency)
Also, I was born in "Prince George's County" in Virginia, so try and top that!
Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas... A lot of states come from Native American terms... Then there's Louisiana from one of the French Louis...
Wait... what's the topic again?
<<Virginia - och - easy peasy! The Virgin Queen - Elizabeth I of England and Wales only - we Scots were still independent when the Virgin Queen was on the throne. OK - the old biddy never married...>>
Don't forget it's the fact she never married and produced an heir that James VI of Scotland became James I of England. It was the Scottish monarch who took the English thrown.
<<Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas... A lot of states come from Native American terms... Then there's Louisiana from one of the French Louis...
>>
Yes, and many of these, like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi were originally Indian names of rivers or water systems broadened to include the territories surrounding them
Aye - it was a Scottish monarch who took the English throne in March 1603...James.
James, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry, Lord Darnley. Darnley was a wee bit of a wanton - arrogant and debauched, who slept with either gender at will, and eventually contracted an STD (known by another name in those days).
Darnley, who was 6' 2" tall, very exceptional in those days - Mary referring to him as her "lean long fellow" - was actually an Englishman, born at Temple Newsom, in Yorkshire in 1545, and who also happened to be Mary's cousin. He was not only riddled with the pox but also with evil intent, and he was instrumental in the assassination of the wee Italian guy, David Rizzio, Mary's private secretary, who was chatting with Mary in her chamber in the Palace of Holyrood here in Edinburgh late one evening when Darnley and his henchmen, armed with an array of swords, burst into the room and butchered the defenceless Italian by stabbing him many times over in front of a very shocked Mary.
The Palace of Holyrood House (very close to the new Scottish Parliament Buidings at Holyrood) is now open to the public and you can wander through the chambers and visit the very room where this gruesome murder took place in 1566.
Darnley met his own end in February 1567 when he was sleeping in another Edinburgh building, Kirk O'Field, when, in the early hours of the morning, a terrific gunpowder explosion destroyed the building, and shorly afterwards Darnley's body was found some distance away, with the deep snow around his body stained red by his blood. The Earl of Bothwell, with the aid of Mary herself, was suspected, but never proved, of having organised the whole plot to kill the feckless Darnley.
Mary subsequently married Bothwell, but her joy was shortlived. Our own Queen of Scots was then involved in the amazing conflictwith her nobles in the characteristic intrigueof those times; she was incarcerated in the old Castle at Loch Leven, and forced to abdicate in favour of James, her son. She managed to escape later, and set forth down to England where she hoped to place herself under the protection of the Queen of England, Elizabeth, the so called Virgin Queen. It was some kind of political asylum, but instead Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned in England. Contrary to popular belief Mary and Elizabeth never actually met each other personally.
In due course Elizabeth did something she later regretted - she signed Mary's death warrant, and on the bitterly cold, freezing, snowy morning of 08 February 1587, our poor wee Queen of Scots was led up to the scaffold in the great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle, in Northamptonshire, England. She was dressed in a heavy black gown, and before the axeman took up his axe she stripped herself of this black outer garment to reveal herself dressed in a blood red gown. She then revealed her small Skye terrier concealed under her dress. She took up the wee dog in her arms and kissed him before handing him to her lady in waiting who was in floods of tears.
She then shocked everyone by removing her chestnut brown wig and revealed her own hair underneath which has turned completely grey even though she was only 45. Her hair was also very short so there was no need for the axeman to ask her to tuck in her hair under a skull cap.
Mary said a prayer for Scotland and her Scottish people, then placed her neck on the block. The axeman was quite overcome with emotion, sadly for Mary, as the first blow merely caused a severe blow to the back of Mary's neck. It took a second blow to sever the head and end Mary's misery.
The English had killed Mary, as they had killed the greatest of Scotland's heroes - William Wallace, aka Braveheart, in London, 282 years earler in 1305.
But it's all history now - as with all past enemies the past is the past, and all is forgiven but never forgotten.
I love England, love going down there from time to time, and have some really great English mates. I maye even have to live in England some time soon - I'll see what happens in my job. London is astoundingly expensive, no joke!
The original 13 colonies are the only ones tied to England, so you should probably stop looking for connections beyond them. People in the original 13 (mostly in the Northeast) have some leftover accent things. Like, Worcester is pronounced "Wooster" and Gloucester "Gloster", etc., but that's really only in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc. Otherwise you get German, Polish, Swedish, and Norwegian connections in the Midwest, blah blah blah.
and the British shouldn't be so flattered about Americans liking their accent. Americans like -any- accent, from Ghana to Spain to wherever. Except for say... New Zealand or South Africa, the accents that are worse than the American accent. You just have to speak like you aren't from North America and you're basically good to go.
<<The original 13 colonies are the only ones tied to England, so you should probably stop looking for connections beyond them. People in the original 13 (mostly in the Northeast) have some leftover accent things. Like, Worcester is pronounced "Wooster" and Gloucester "Gloster", etc., but that's really only in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc. Otherwise you get German, Polish, Swedish, and Norwegian connections in the Midwest, blah blah blah. >>
Also, areas of New England and the Northeast have maintained ties with England throughout their history, with continuous travel and immigration/emmigration in both directions. Such has only served to strengthen the bonds there. It's no wonder that the accents there sound so, well, "British (i.e. English English)".
English legacy is also very prominent in Virginia, where most of the people there claim English descent. Otherwise, as one fares southward, you will find Celtic influences (Irish, Scottish) becoming more dominant in the Carolinas and Georgia, and at least I notice a change in the average locals' appearance, from fair (English) to more swart (Scottish), but these are merely generalizations I know.
When you glance at a map of Masschussetts, USA, you could almost be looking at a map of England with all those familiar place names.
There's even a Leominster in MA, USA.....just as there is in Herefordshire, England, where it is pronounced as "Lemster". Also Cambridge. Further up in Vermont you find Rutland - the name of the smallest county in England. Next door in New Hampshire (the Old one is in England, too) is Manchester, of all places. Down in Connecticut is good old Stamford - like the one in Lincolnshire, England, which has such spectacular Georgian architecture that they are always using it as settings for TV period dramas. Another Lincolnshire town is Boston, also nicked by MA. The English Boston is now swamped with immigrants from eastern Europe so its streets are now ringing with all kinds of accents.
I know there are Aberdeens across the USA.......I'm not sure if there are any Edinburghs though. Or Glasgows - I doubt it somehow. Certainly any Cowdenbeaths or Cambuslangs are highly unlikely.....
<<I'm not sure if there are any Edinburghs though. Or Glasgows - I doubt it somehow. Certainly any Cowdenbeaths or Cambuslangs are highly unlikely..... >>
Au contraire, mon ami
There is indeed an Edinburgh USA in Indiana
And EIGHT Glasgows to boot:
Glasgow, Delaware
Glasgow, Illinois
Glasgow, Kentucky
Glasgow, Missouri
Glasgow, Montana
Glasgow, Pennsylvania
Glasgow, Virginia
Glasgow, West Virginia
There are large amounts of english descended people all throughout the usa. mostly in new england, utah, the virginias, carolinas... but the northest and california also have a fair amount, washington has quite a large amount due to being a part of the empire more recently than any other us state.
In fact, the English population of America is probably underestimated due to the large amounts of people in the midwest and south who have famalies with long scots-irish-english-german-irish mixed ancestries and simply call themselves 'American' on the census.
Then you have the large amounts of non white african and native americans who if they have white ancestry it's usually english or other british isles ancestry. There's no doubt the influence of the british isles on america as a whole is more than any other nation.
<<What did America go through to perfect their Union? About 2,000 years of separate tribal lifestyles largely as hunter-gathers, and other such pleasantness. You aren't going to erase 2,000 years of history with a piece of paper...>>
More like 10,000 years, Pot, and possibly longer (some estimates are over 20,000!)
<<Certainly not, you have to break every agreement you ever made with those natives (at least until the 1970's or so) just to fuck them over. Genocide? Call it what you want, those natives aren't real Americans! They lost, right?>>
What an odd concept. They are still as American as anyone else.
<<The EU is not the same type of union the US is and probably never will be. The only US state to be a recognised independent country was Texas and that was after the US existed as a country.>>
California was also (briefly) an independent nation -- that's why the flag still says "Bear Flag Republic". And Hawaii was a polynesian kingdom prior to statehood -- have we all forgotten such Hawaiian monarchs as King Kamehameha and Queen Lilliuokalani (forgive the spellings -- probably as wrong as "Ediburgh"!)
And Texas had to wait almost a decade between winning its revolt against Mexico and finally being annexed by the US, which for years would not touch the Lone Star Republic with a ten foot pole. Sam Houston thus became the only former foreign head of state to later serve in the US Senate -- and he bitterly opposed Texas's subsequent decision to secede from the US during the Civil War -- after all, he had fought so long and hard to get TX into the US!
<<American diversity is more racial than geographical. There is little chance an American can differentiate accents on a state by state level >>
That's very true for most states. There are a few exceptions, but mostly accent variation encompasses multistate regions rather than individual states. So does cultural variation, by the way. So on those levels it is more accurate to talk about differences between southerners, east coasters, New Englanders, westerners, west coasters, and midwesterners than it is to talk about Coloradans versus Missourians -- Colorado and Missouri function more as political entities, lines on a map. The true distinction between the two would be as westerners versus midwesterners (with strong southern overtones). Other countries have these regional distinctions as well, which don't always correspond to the actual political subdivisions, but may bleed over into surrounding areas.
***There's no doubt the influence of the British Isles on America as a whole is more than any other nation.***
That may well be the case, at least up until the present time, maybe even earlier......but any British influence, as such, is set to decline at a fair rate of knots, maybe even faster, as immigration into the USA continues at a steady rate from those parts of the world which have absolutely no connection or affiliation with the UK whatsoever.
Unlike Europe, the USA is a huge country with plenty of space (lucky Americans!) and people continue to pour in over there from all over, not least of all from the Latin countries of the Americas.
I repeat the comment I made in another post about the official report which was given due prominence in the UK media recently - that by 2042 the racial makeup of the overall population of the USA will have changed so much that the WASPS, so called (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) will be in the minority over there (c. 45%) and that by 2050 non-whites will form the majority of the population of the USA. Whether they will all be concentrated in certain States rather than across the boars remains to be seen, but nevertheless they are bound to have a huge influence on the running of the country. Whether all this may affect the status of the English Language in America is open to speculation.
We may well see further signs of this change in the American scene come 20 January 2009 on Capitol Hill in Washington......interesting.
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